| Contents | 3 |
| 1 Introduction | 4 |
| 2 How sickness absence can be inherited | 6 |
| 3 Swedish sickness insurance | 8 |
| 4 Empirical strategy and data | 9 |
| 5 Main results | 14 |
| 6 Correlations between children and parents in-law | 20 |
| 7 Sibling comparisons | 22 |
| 8 Concluding discussion | 26 |
| 9 References | 27 |
| 10 Appendix | 29 |